Just heard on talkSPORT that they have won the rights to the British & Irish Lion RU tour to Australia next year. The rights were previously with BBC Five Live. They will provide commentary on all Three tests, the tour matches and even a warm up match against the Barbarians in Hong Kong!

Out of interest do we give the Radio rights to our International games to the BBC as part of the TV package or do they pay for them separatley? If so what chance talkSPORT providing coverage of the 2013 RLWC?

"Rugby League is rugby in the simplest form in the sense that it's about great defence, great tackling technique, good handling, good passing, catching and great kicking."

Think of it this way! Radio 5 live gives quite good coverage of Rugby League and it has George Riley figting its corner, too! In addition, it puts live and uninterrupted game coverage on an additional station Radio Five Live Sports Extra!

Both stations are available on DAB, of Freeview channels 705 etc, on Sky Sat channels 0105 etc, and on line, too! For all I know, its on Freesat, Virgin etc,as well! That pretty god coverage, though of course we can always do with more!

As for RL being mainly on the Sports Extra subchannel, surely everyone can access this station anyway? If you don't have internet or a DAB radio, it is available on Freeview, and with the analogue TV switch-off complete (or at least close to completion), people can't miss out unless they're really trying.

Edited by Futtocks, 07 November 2012 - 04:43 PM.

A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it isn’t open. Frank Zappa (1940 - 1993)

As for RL being mainly on the Sports Extra subchannel, surely everyone can access this station anyway? If you don't have internet or a DAB radio, it is available on Freeview, and with the analogue TV switch-off complete (or at least close to completion), people can't miss out unless they're really trying.

With the amount of televised matches, the only time I'm interested in listening to the commentary on 5 Live (or Sports Extra) is when I'm in the car. Where I don't get 5LSE

no one is going to buy them just to listen to the occasional RL game! a large group of people will continue to have non-digital radios in their cars for many years to come.

anyway, that's besides the point - the point about Talk Sport is that it has a lot of listeners and when it has the rights to something it plugs it at every opportunity. I do around 3 - 4 hrs a day in the car an will inevitably flick to talk sport at some point and will no doubt hear adverts for the RU now - they sell the sport, not just their own coverage....most importantly, they sell it to what is a kind of captive market (people stuck in the car flicking between radio stations). The way the RU coverage is promoted when they have it will mean more RU experts interviewed as guests in the various shows, the adverts for their own commentary and then snippets in other areas - can guarantee the betting features will start offering the odds on who will win the tests and first scorer etc etc. - all in all, RU will get a lot of value from what might be perceived to be 'just commentary'.

The BBC of course can't offer that wrap around coverage because it cannot advertise and because it has a broader range of topics to focus on. Talk sport is 'Talk football' 95% of the time beacuse that's what its audience desires - 5 Live hasn't such a narrow focus.

the real win for RU in giving rights to talk sport is that is also allows them to target a new market...if most listeners are football fans they're not typically RU fans so it allows them to push their product to new groups and also reduce a perception that the sport is for posh boys from public schools. that's a value RU gets from being on talk sport that RL wouldn't to the same extent.

so I agree, BBC would probably offer better commentary to the typical RL fan - but talk sport is a route to selling the game wider.

I was an early adopter of DAB, mainly for Test Match Special*, but also because I sort of expected any future RL coverage (R5 wasn't doing Superleague commentary at the time, IIRC) would be far more likely to end up on there than on the main station.

*superb on DAB, compared to noisy, drifting Long Wave.

A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it isn’t open. Frank Zappa (1940 - 1993)